But less frequently addressed is how technology can make it easier for procurement teams to operate sustainably, improve supply chain transparency and eliminate corruption.

In our latest Procure with Purpose webinar we’ll be exploring how the latest and greatest in technology innovations can not only help procurement pros deliver business value but also drive and enable purpose-led practice.

Join us on October 10th when we’ll discuss the tech that’s helping procurement teams to collaborate with their suppliers and improve transparency; how to communicate the importance of using tech to improve purpose-led procurement and why businesses must integrate tech-led purpose-driven practice into all of their decision making.

How do I register for the webinar?

Registering for The Missing Puzzle Piece: How Technology Can Empower You To Procure With Purpose couldn’t be easier (and, of course, it’s FREE!)

I’m already a member of Procurious, do I still need to register?

Yes! If you are already a member of Procurious you muststill enroll to access the webinar. We’ll send you a email with a link to the webinar platform in the run up to the event.

When is it taking place?

The webinar takes place on 10th October at 10am EDT/ 3pm BST. Sign up or log in via the form above and we’ll be in touch ahead of the event to provide details on how to join the webinar live.

Help! I can’t make it to the live-stream

No problem! If you can’t make the live-stream you can catch up whenever it suits you. We’ll be making it available on Procurious soon after the event (and will be sure to send you a link) so you can listen at your leisure!

Can I ask a question?

If you’d like to ask one of our speakers a question please submit it via the Discussion Board on Procurious and we’ll do our very best to ensure it gets answered for you.

What is the Procure with Purpose community?

Procure with Purpose is a community for procurement pros who want to deliver value beyond cost savings and efficiencies – shining a light on the biggest issues from Modern Slavery to Environmental Sustainability – and on you, our members, who are already driving exponential change.

Webinar Speakers

Oliver Campbell, Director Procurement & Packaging Engineering

Oliver is a Director of Procurement & Packaging Engineering at Dell Technologies. He has become one of the most influential thought leaders in the packaging industry by combining innovation and supply chain best practices. Under his leadership, Dell introduced industry changing materials such as bamboo, mushroom, and molded paper pulp for more environmentally healthier packaging.

Most recently, Dell launched Ocean Plastic packaging with the aim of creating an industry response to tackle the task of the ocean plastic crisis. Through founding NextWave, a cross-industry consortium of like-minded companies, Dell is creating a commercially viable, and scalable, supply chain that is focused on keeping plastics out of the ocean and in the circular economy.

Oliver’s accomplishments have been highlighted for their business and social influence by Fortune in their 2017 Change the World Companies, and by LinkedIn in their 2017 Top Companies to Work For. Additionally, the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show recognized his pioneering work in Ocean Plastic with a Best of Innovation Award. Mr. Campbell holds Bachelor and Master Engineering degrees from Cornell University and an MBA from The University of Texas. In his free time, you can find him training for his next triathlon.

Justin Sadler-Smith is head of SAP Ariba UK and Ireland, procurement and supply chain thought leader, and cognitive procurement ambassador. He is one of a growing number of procurement leaders around the world who helps procurement and supply-chain teams ensure that fair labor practices are in play across their global supply chains by harnessing innovative technology and increasing competitive advantage

Padmini Ranganathan, Global Vice President – SAP Ariba

Padmini Ranganathan is Vice President, Products and Innovation for Supplier Risk, Compliance and Sustainability solutions for SAP Ariba. In this role, she is responsible for product strategy and engineering and leads a team of experts focused on delivering solutions that enable risk-aware, sustainable and ethical supply chains.

Prior to SAP Ariba, Padmini led the Analytics for Industries solutions marketing team at SAP which brought to market the first analytical applications and content for “art of the possible” industry and line of business application scenarios. Before joining SAP, Padmini worked at Oracle, where she was part of the procurement product management team that delivered the first web-based, self-service applications for procurement and a technical consultant in the areas of order management, inventory & distribution, procurement and manufacturing.

Padmini is a passionate advocate for bringing technology to business users that simplifies and enriches their daily work and decision making. And as the Products & Innovation lead for SAP Ariba’s Procurement with Purpose initiatives, she is dedicated to helping businesses balance their costs with conscience and make an impact on the larger world.

Padmini has a post-graduate diploma in computer science from UC Berkeley, California, and a bachelor’s degree in commerce with a major in Cost & Management Accounting from Bangalore University, India.

Sign up for The Missing Puzzle Piece: How Technology Can Empower You To Procure With Purpose ahead of 10th October.

We know Gen Z don’t fit into the traditional workplace – but how can procurement organisations embrace these revolutionaries to benefit from their rebellious nature and leverage their innovative approaches?

As a procurement manager with very rigid, process driven procurement software in place, how do you plan to manage the potential chaos that will come from the millennials in your current workforce and the Generation Z’s about to enter it?

Firstly, let’s address three ways of dealing with this issue. Do you ignore them, do you suppress them, or do you take time to investigate what these natural rebels and revolutionaries can offer?

Both groups are born entrepreneurs; they mesh work and play together, they’re smart beyond their years and they have a clear picture of what they want from a career.

Technology has been a major influencer in the develop of a new type of professional. It has provided access to vast amounts of information and has become the great equalizer, playing a major role in their disruptive nature at home and at work.

In my experience, I’ve found that both millennials and Z’s are self-starters – they work smarter and harder than you may think and have disproved time and again the “lazy” stereotype. They’re not averse to working outside normal business hours and use their daily commutes or downtime to get work done because they want to complete it promptly.

The tech catalyst

So, we know that millennials and Z’s don’t fit traditional workplace rules, so how can organisations benefit from their rebellious nature?

Technology is the catalyst of this rebellion. It meshes the world of work and play into a single environment; one where users expect the ‘Amazon’ type experience they get at home on Sunday to be mirrored in how they use technology at work on Monday. ­­

What do you say to the team member that walks into your office to tell you that your existing procurement software is drowning the team? They then show you an app they downloaded over weekend that allowed them to create RFQs, connect and chat with suppliers, make decisions and save a ton of their time and your money.

Revolutionaries are born from discontent. They’re frustrated at the status quo, and those who lead them are searching for a better way. It can be a challenging process, but these young rebels – or, to use a modern term: these entrepreneurs – are simply seeking more effective and flexible ways to work.

A new approach

So how would you react to the above scenario? It starts by changing how you approach the thinking behind the solution. This means recognising that innovation is no longer a top-down exercise that remains in the exclusive domain of senior management teams or corporate retreats.

Real innovation today is being driven from the ground up by those rebels within our teams that simply want a better work experience and are not afraid to try new technology or methods to get better outcomes.

It wasn’t that long ago when ‘agile’ was a term used only in software and development teams. I now see sales teams working with scrums and management teams having daily stand ups – it’s just one example of the new way of thinking and doing that is helping business work faster in today’s instant world.

Does this mean that it’s time to let the revolution rise and allow the rebels to take over the organization? Well, not entirely – it’s about getting the balance right.

It’s time for procurement leaders to stop lamenting about being seen as the roadblocks within their organisations and to look to your millennials and Z’s as a talent pool rich with ideas, innovation and passion.

They will challenge, they will make mistakes, but it is time to move beyond the current boundaries you’ve set, and remember – you were a rebel once, too!

About the author

Alan Paul is a thought leader and CEO of sourceit, a technology company that has led the market in the development of simple and easy-to-use sourcing applications for indirect categories.

Sourceit offers three different products for buyers:

RFQ – time saving request for quote software for all indirect categories,

Market – a specialized procurement and job management application for marketing services, and

Does the rise of eAuctions mean the professions’ hard-won negotiation skills are now irrelevant?

rangizzz/Shutterstock.com

On Procurious, we’re keeping a close eye on the rise of procurement-related technology and what it means for roles and skill-sets across the profession. One such technology – the eAuction – has proven itself to be a highly efficient way of conducting a sourcing event and driving prices down. But does the advent of eAuctions mean that procurement professionals’ negotiation skills are no longer required?

This was one of the topics discussed at a Negotiation Roundtable organised by CABL (Conti Advanced Business Learning) and facilitated by its Founder, Giuseppe Conti.

Keep your options open

Thierry Blomet, Kemira’s Senior VP of Global Sourcing, told the roundtable that in his experience, the contract cannot always be awarded immediately after the eAuction. “We had an eAuction where it became clear that there were so many moving parts and questions that could not be answered during the event itself. We realised there’d be the need for additional discussion, so we used the outcome of the eAuction to narrow the bidders down to a small group of preferred suppliers, and continued the conversation from there.”

In other words, if you want to keep your options open, it’s important to communicate to suppliers that you may make the decision not to award at the conclusion of the eAuction. Instead, you may move the leading suppliers to a next-step status.

The nature of the eAuction itself presets your ability to negotiate during the event. There’s a bewildering array of eAuction formats – Dutch, Japanese, Brazilian, English to name a few – so it’s important to do your research. Blomet comments, “If you try to condense the event to 30 minutes, for example, you leave very little room to negotiate. A longer event leaves more room for something to happen and for you to react accordingly.”

Play fair

Francesco Lucchetta, Director of Strategic Supply at Pentair, says the ability to play with the visibility of quotes – so participants in the same eAuction can see each other’s bids – can be very helpful in encouraging competition. He warns, though, that the contract should have been established and its terms accepted by the bidders well before the eAuction takes place. “Make sure your suppliers have accepted your contractual terms, so no more discussions need to happen once the award is in place.”

Blomet notes that there are a lot of ethical aspects that need to be clearly communicated and understood before an eAuction. “You need to be able to define any red lines, and make sure participating suppliers understand. During the eAuction, ethical breaches could include inviting a fake vendor, or having a hidden way of scoring. It’s a matter of credibility.”

Tamara Taubert, Procter and Gamble’s Global Capability Purchasing Leader, comments that purchasing teams always need to behave in ways that are consistent with their values, and this includes running an eAuction. “Think about how you will behave as a company during the event. If the information about the event became public in 5, 10 or 20 years from now, would you be comfortable with that? You need to guarantee fair and ethical treatment of all participants.”

In fact, unethical behaviour by some corporations using eAuctions means that many suppliers are uncomfortable with the concept. Blomet notes that some large corporations have established that they do not participate in reverse auctions as a rule. “There have been a lot of issues in the past caused by poor communication, poor management, unethical behaviour, or suppliers simply being uncomfortable with the technology.”

This suggests there’s work to be done to improve the reputation of ethically-driven eAuctions.

Interested in attending a CABL Negotiation workshop? Click here to find out more. The founder, Giuseppe Conti, has over 20 years of Procurement experience with leading multinationals and over 10 years of negotiation teaching experience at leading Business Schools (including Oxford, HEC Paris, IMD and ESADE).

You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, all procurement pros want to change the world… Perhaps that starts with the smart factories of the future, which will need to embody innovation.

Revolution is in the air. Smart factories of the future will need to be innovative, nimble and smart; constantly changing and improving on the back of intelligent use of data. Professor Robert Harrison explains the challenges and opportunities for forward-thinking manufacturers.

If you haven’t heard of smart factories yet, you’ve probably heard of Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution. Smart factories are the next big predicted change to affect manufacturing, causing a new revolution in industry.

By integrating technology and information in real time, traditional factories will turn from cost centres into profitable innovation centres. Cyber-physical systems (CPS) will monitor the physical processes within modular structured factories, and a virtual copy of the physical world will be mined for data in real time, enabling decentralised decisions.

What’s all the smart factory fuss about?

These new systems could, for example, identify run-time optimisation by feeding back information related to product, process and production resources, or identify best engineering re-use. We will be able to be ‘smart’ in our manufacturing choices, from product design and evaluation, right through to manufacturing, the supply chain and service provision.

The increasing availability and use of distributed industrial CPS devices and systems, if aligned with the Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Services (IoS), could radically change the nature of manufacturing and provide new opportunities to develop more-effective, finer-grained, and self-configuring automation systems.

To achieve this, manufacturers will need to make changes. To realise effective CPS for industrial automation implies the need for engineering tools capable of supporting distributed systems. This is coupled with a major shift in emphasis from traditional monolithic, specialism-based, isolated engineering tools and methods, towards integrated, cloud-based infrastructure based around an IoS and associated data.

So what’s the problem…?

Current automation systems engineering methods are frequently criticised for their poor performance in supporting re-use, and are often unable to effectively validate automation solutions across supply chains. Integration between real and virtual systems is often less than ideal, which makes it difficult to plot an efficient automation system lifecycle from specification and design, through to commissioning, validation, operation and reuse of systems.
Simply put, the engineering process we have at the moment is disjointed and it could be so much smarter.

Another oft-cited problem is that the majority of the automation tools currently at our disposal are vendor-specific and support largely closed control environments. While they may offer good point-solution functionality, are well supported, and can deliver robust operational systems, they often have limited agility.

These factors lead to delays and ultimately to poor lifecycle uses of information, with lessons learned not being fed back into subsequent iterations of the system.

… and the solution?

Cyber-physical systems are distributed, heterogeneous systems connected via networks, and usually associated with the concept of the IoT. The vision for the new CPS lifecycle is one of seamless integration between engineering build and operational phases.

The digital model continuously updates to and from the physical system, and lessons learned are fed back into subsequent refinements of the system, making them ever smarter.

At WMG, we focus on the design and implementation of automation, systems engineering tools and methods adapted to the specific nature of CPS. Part of a new engineering software environment – vueOne – is currently being used to support Ford’s virtual engineering activity in powertrain assembly in the UK. vueOne is also being used to support engineering of battery and electric motor make-like-production systems in partnership with a range of automotive companies.

Properly supporting the full manufacturing lifecycle is important if we are to maximise the business benefits for the smart factory. At a simple level, once a digital model of a production station has been created, this information can be utilised via apps on mobile devices to enable support for production systems on the shop floor. This may be in the form of viewing digital data for monitoring and maintenance purposes.
However, in more sophisticated scenarios, augmented reality can be provided, overlaying key system information visually over physical views of the production system, and to support this we’re currently developing a suite of mobiles tools.

A key aspect of smart factories that will ensure they are truly successful is having a pipeline to progressively develop and then maximise the impact of innovative automation systems. For example, developing proof-of-concept systems from bench-top demonstrators, through full-scale pilot implementations, make-like production lines, and ultimately to factory installation, working closely with industry partners at all phases of this activity.